According to analyst forecasts and sources familiar with the matter, global ride-hailing giant Uber has committed to investing over $100 billion in the coming years to purchase thousands of autonomous vehicles and take equity stakes in their technology developers. This major strategic shift marks Uber's official departure from the light-asset "gig economy" business model that made it famous, as it seeks to avoid being disrupted by driverless taxi services. It is understood that Uber is working to position itself as a core marketplace platform connecting multiple autonomous taxi operators. The company has established partnerships with more than ten companies in the autonomous driving and electric vehicle industries, including Baidu, Rivian, and Lucid. Under Uber's outlined timeline, the company plans to launch driverless taxi services in at least 28 cities worldwide by 2028. Based on analyst estimates and data from insiders, Uber will invest over $25 billion in strategic equity investments in its partners to deeply secure technology supply relationships. Meanwhile, the procurement and deployment costs for the autonomous taxi fleet are projected to exceed $75 billion. It is important to note that these massive deals are contingent on certain conditions. Reports indicate that the execution of related agreements and funding disbursements will depend on Uber's partners meeting specific milestones for autonomous technology deployment and commercial operation.

Breaking from its "gig economy" DNA, Uber is transforming from a matching platform into an asset holder. For a long time, Uber's core competitiveness lay in its light-asset platform model, which involved neither owning vehicles nor employing drivers. However, with the accelerated commercialization of purely driverless services like Waymo and Tesla's Cybercab, the industry's fundamental logic is being completely rewritten. When human drivers are no longer needed behind the wheel, the millions of drivers Uber has accumulated could become cost optimization targets. Facing pressure from Tesla, which has refused to cooperate and chosen to build its own vertical ecosystem, Uber has been compelled to shift from being a pure "matchmaker" to becoming a "participant and owner." Previously disclosed information from Lucid confirmed this shift: Uber has expanded its agreement with Lucid, investing $500 million and committing to purchase at least 35,000 Lucid vehicles. This single transaction alone could represent a financial commitment of over $20 billion from Uber. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently stated in an investor meeting that the company is investing capital to secure future autonomous taxi supply, emphasizing that this supply will be based on a profitable economic model.

Industry interest is surging as artificial intelligence accelerates the path to commercialization. Although promises of driverless taxi commercialization have repeatedly fallen short over the years, interest from capital markets and the industry has surged in recent months, fueled by breakthroughs in generative AI and large language models. There is a broad consensus within the industry that the deep integration of AI technology holds the potential to solve long-tail problems in complex traffic scenarios more quickly and significantly reduce high hardware and operational costs. Currently, Uber has established a deep collaboration with Nvidia, targeting the large-scale deployment of Level 4 autonomous driving by 2028. Additionally, the company has invested $100 million in building a fast-charging network in Los Angeles, Dallas, and San Francisco to lay the infrastructure groundwork for the upcoming electric autonomous fleet.